


Dance for Two

by merryghoul



Category: Us (Movie 2019)
Genre: Ballet, Character Study, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Pre-Canon, References to The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21668068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/pseuds/merryghoul
Summary: The real Adelaide was fond of ballet.  The Adelaide who replaced her?  Not so much.
Relationships: Adelaide Wilson & Red (Us Movie 2019)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 30
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Dance for Two

**Author's Note:**

  * For [3pipeproblem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/3pipeproblem/gifts).



The girl never had a name. The parents of the girl she choked called her Adelaide. The girl decided to go by that name. It was hard for her to protest, anyway. She couldn’t speak.

The real Adelaide’s parents thought something traumatic happened to their Adelaide. They didn't know their real Adelaide was somewhere down below. The girl decided to keep up appearances to make Adelaide's parents think she was really Adelaide. Ballet was something the real Adelaide knew how to do. It was also an excuse for the girl to learn how to speak.

Years later, the girl accepted being called “Adelaide." She knew some of the basic ballet moves the real Adelaide learned years before the girl made it to the surface. The new Adelaide didn’t understand everything she read and heard, though. Adelaide chose a duet—the Gran Pas de Deux from Tchaikovsky’s _The Nutcracker_ —for her solo recital, stunning her teacher. Adelaide didn't know what a pas de deux was. She assumed she’d be following someone else’s solo and it would be a follow the leader type of thing.

Adelaide went to her library and browsed the video section. A VHS cassette slid out of the shelf as if someone was pulling it. Adelaide picked up the cassette. The video was a performance of _The Nutcracker_ that aired on CBS in 1977, but Adelaide didn't know that. She didn't know Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland were on the cover of the cassette. Adelaide sensed the two dancers on the cover looked like they were doing the Gran Pas de Deux.

Adelaide checked out _The Nutcracker_ cassette.

Adelaide watched all of the CBS version of _The Nutcracker._ There were colorful, hand-painted backgrounds. Costumes that reminded her of clown outfits, except for ballerinas. Nothing special happened while she was watching most of the movie. 

But when the Gran Pas de Deux started, it felt as if someone else was sitting by her. Like they were making movements--not like Baryshnikov and Kirkland, but drawing lines on a chalkboard. Like they were making notes for something. 

Adelaide rented studio space alone to practice. She received looks of disbelief when she told people she was doing the Gran Pas de Deux from _The Nutcracker_ alone, but the people in charge of the studio space allowed her to have the time. It felt like, at times, the people were looking for Adelaide's partner. And if not her partner, the number to a doctor if Adelaide didn't require immediate medical attention.

In the studio, Adelaide warmed up. As she moved on to practicing the Gran Pas de Deux, it felt like there was someone else there. Someone grabbed her hand, but she couldn’t see it. Someone would be in the positions the Nutcracker Prince would be if she was practicing with a partner.

When Adelaide walked out of the studio spaced unharmed, the people in charge of the studio relaxed their grips on their emergency numbers and their phone.

Adelaide relished in the attention she received after her Gran Pas de Deux. It started with one person standing up. Then a few. Within seconds she received a standing ovation. There were whistles and loud cheers. As Adelaide bowed to the audience, she felt accepted in the moment. Like she could be one of them. And none of them would know the truth about her. 

Adelaide's teacher wanted her to do another solo. If Adelaide impressed people with her solo that turned into a pas de deux, she thought she could do the same thing again. She went to the library and went through a set of encyclopedias. The B volume and the entry for "ballet" led Adelaide to the first set of the S volume and the ballet _The Sleeping Beauty_ by Tchaikovsky. That ballet also had a pas de deux between two characters, a princess named Florine and a male Bluebird. Adelaide found the library's copy of the Kird Ballet's performance of _The Sleeping Beauty_ herself. Adelaide couldn't sense her ballet partner anywhere in the library.

Adelaide's mysterious ballet partner also didn't appear in her home. There wasn't a sense of someone taking notes on a chalkboard while Adelaide watched _The Sleeping Beauty._

Adelaide rented studio space by herself again. What was the same: the people in charge of the studio worried about Adelaide's health. What wasn't: the presence. It still wasn't there. Adelaide executed her part as Princess Florine flawlessly. But the pas de deux didn't feel right without her invisible partner. And it was too late for Adelaide to change her performance from a miraculous pas de deux to a solo for her recital.

The day after Adelaide practiced _The Sleeping Beauty_ pas de deux, Adelaide told her ballet instructor, and then the people she referred to as her parents, she was quitting ballet. The three were shocked. All three thought ballet helped Adelaide heal after her traumatic experience at the Santa Cruz boardwalk. All three didn't know this wasn't their Adelaide. All three never knew this Adelaide's passion was not in solos from pas de deux.

The old Adelaide decided to rename herself while she was stuck in this underground world. She found papers she could only read and learned the people around her were called the Tethered. As she encountered people down there, she gave them names. Meanwhile, she gave herself the name of Red.

It was Red’s decision to try to find a way out to her old world. She found it being the partner of the girl that took her place above ground. Now that she found a way out, she had no use for the girl until she found a way to kill her, or send her back to the world of the Tethered, or both. Red had no idea that years later her plan would lead her to her death. For that moment, Red smiled, knowing giving up her dream in the world above would deny her doppelgänger any pleasure of performing using her talents.


End file.
